French artist Ben, best known for his slogans in handwriting against a black background, has died aged 88, taking his own life just hours after the death of his wife with whom he had been married 60 years, his family said Wednesday.
His wife Annie suffered a stroke on Monday evening, and died on Wednesday, the couple’s two children, Eva and Francois, said in a statement.
“Unwilling and unable to live without her, Ben killed himself a few hours later at their home” in Saint-Pancrace, a district of the French Mediterranean city of Nice.
“The world of culture has lost a legend,” Culture Minister Rachida Dati said, hailing a “goldsmith of language” with “humorous, sometimes satirical writing” and whose “art will continue to make France shine throughout the world.”
“On our children’s pencil cases, on so many everyday objects and even in our imaginations, Ben had left his mark, made of freedom and poetry, of apparent lightness and overwhelming depth,” added President Emmanuel Macron in a statement.
Police vehicles remained stationed all day Wednesday outside the artist’s residence in Nice while a forensics investigator and a public prosecutor arrived at midday for the investigation into the causes of death, an AFP journalist said.
The precise cause of death was not immediately clear.
Born in Naples in 1935 as Benjamin Vautier to a Franco-Swiss family, Ben co-founded the so-called Nice school of artists with fellow luminaries based in the Cote d’Azur including Yves Klein.
His “writings” – phrases often drawn in white paint on a black background – seem at first glance to have been dreamed up by a schoolboy.
But they shake up the established notions of contemporary art with phrases like “What is the use of art?”, “Is the new always new?”, “What are you doing here?”, or “My biggest worry is me”.
Ben defended the presence of art in everyday life and his works have been reproduced on school bags, pencil cases and notebooks and also adorn tram stops in Nice.
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